The Weekly Power List: 03.09.12

GQ recently unveiled its list of the 50 Most Powerful People in Washington, a look at who’s up in the nation’s status-obsessed capital. But power is fluid in Washington, and it’s wielded in ever-changing ways, from the city’s establishment bosses to its hungry young strivers. So we’re bringing you a weekly power list: a mini-guide to the players in American politics and why they matter now. Because it’s an election year, sometimes the players with the most Washington fanboys will often not live in Washington at all.

This week: a prime minister, an ambassador, an actress and a law student.

On the night before Super Tuesday, it wasn’t the primaries most news anchors and political types were obsessing over—it was Netanyahu’s visit to the White House amid an international freak-out about whether Israel is really planning to attack Iran. Just how powerful is Bibi’s decision to the presidential race? "There’s no question [Republicans] seem to believe this is a positive wedge issue, trying to outdo one another as to who can be more supportive," says Aaron David Miller, who’s served as an adviser to six U.S. secretaries of state. Daily Dish writer Andrew Sullivan takes a darker view. "I don’t think you can understand the Republican strategy for this election without factoring in a key GOP player, Benjamin Netanyahu. He already has core members of the US Congress siding openly with him against the US president ... Here’s a prediction," Sullivan wrote, "Netanyahu, in league and concert with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes."

Defending Israel at the United Nations and selling the Israelis on the administration’s policy toward them are two roles that might seem as complementary as peanut butter and a sledgehammer. But Susan Rice could put both on her business card, according to those who watched her make the case for the administration’s support of Israel at the annual AIPAC conference this week. The ambassador argued the United States’ record on defending their strategic ally so well the rabbis in the room were literally singing her praises by the end of it, according to Tablet correspondent Marc Tracy. Rice’s name is now mentioned in the same breath as Senator John Kerry’s as a choice for the next World Bank leader or Secretary of State.

Biber Chen, who served as general counsel for the last Romney campaign, is in charge of delegate issues and securing ballot access for team Romney. Early in the campaign, she dispatched volunteers to secure double the number of signatures needed to ensure ballot access in each state, according to The Washington Post. That level of organization has made a big difference in this squeaker campaign, because Romney’s main opponent, Rick Santorum, was unable to secure ballot access in Virginia and incapable of securing all of the available delegates in states like Ohio and Illinois, the latter of which has a primary later this month. "As we saw with President Obama’s 2008 operation, being on top of the minutiae such as delegate rules and ballot access is crucially important. It not only makes sure that a candidate doesn’t leave any votes on the table, as happened to Santorum in Ohio, it also sends the message that the candidate is organized, competent, and determined," says Rick Hasen, author of Election Law Blog and a professor at UC Irvine.

Fluke is one of those rare figures yanked from obscurity and almost overnight elevated to the center of a national debate. From the moment Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" for testifying at a Democratic hearing in favor of the administration’s requirement that religious affiliated institutions cover contraception in their health care policies, defending Fluke became a new Democratic cause. The president called her, and the GOP presidential candidates were compelled to repudiate Rush. Fluke handled the controversy, and public exposure, with preternatural calm.

Moore is our representative choice for the cast of HBO’s Game Change, screenwriter Danny Strong, director Jay Roach and journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. (Click here to read GQ culture critic Tom Carson’s review.) Because, for a few hours on Saturday night, Washington’s political class will hit pause on 2012 and take a very short trip down memory lane to a time when our iPhones were still Blackberries and our candidates were genuine political talents locked in the most gripping, enthralling presidential campaign in recent history.

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